4/20: Sweet smoke from Vancouver to Boulder

The informal 4/20 national marijuana smoke-in, born in the 1970’s at San Rafael High School in California, has grown (illegally) from the Canadian province with a billion-dollar “B.C. Bud” crop to the campus of “Rocky Mountain High” in Colorado.

It’s an historic April 20th, on a number of counts.

We’re marking the 75th anniversary of the federal prohibition on marijuana, which has not prevented 100 million Americans from smoking cannabis, in venues from the elite Honolulu high school attended by Barack Obama to the I-didn’t-inhale experience in England of Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton.

Our politicians seem to agree, in words from Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the Summit of the Americas in Colombia that the criminal pursuit of pot “is not working but it is not clear what we should do.”

The University of Colorado-Boulder usually features one of America’s largest smoke-ins. And this year, voters in Colorado will get to decide on proposition 64, which would tax and regulate cannabis.

Initiative 502, on Washington’s ballot, would do likewise — and has garnered support from a former FBI man, the Seattle city attorney, nabobs from the bar and medicine, and a former U.S. Attorney.

Nowhere is 4/20 more popular than in Vancouver, B.C., where high school students flock to downtown each year. CBS News checked the records, and 900 more Vancouver students skilled school on 4/20/2011 than Wednesday the week before.

On the eve of 4/20, Stop Violence B.C. brought ex-U.S. Attorney John McKay up to Vancouver for a press conference, where he joined ex-British Columbia Attorney General Geoff Plant in calling for marijuana legalization.

The Vancouver School Board did not check the calendar this year, and put down 4/20 as a “professional development day” for teachers — with many high school classes canceled.

The school board did schedule a concert at East Vancouver’s Rio Cafe. But with classes out, the day off means up, up and away for many secondary students in the Great White North.

“I don’t think it’s very responsible: I think the schools should instead be educating our children about the potential long-term effects of smoking pot when you are a teenager,” parent Inge Mueller-Langer told CBC.

But anti-marijuana “education” — notably the famous movie “Reefer Madness” — has itself become an object of mirth. In the 1970’s, sponsors of Seattle’s Blossom Initiative used the film as a fund-raising tool.

However many kids turn out in Boulder and Vancouver (and California’s Marin County), the crowds of smokers likely will not approach those of Seattle’s annual waterfront Hempfest Festival.